A Life in Books: Books of the Year 2019Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2019In a world where we present our diverse selves through social media, chatbots and messaging, this dark novel listens in on intimate secrets, desires and adultery.This novel-within-a-novel charts the writing of a story about Richard and Anna, a middle-aged professional couple, who face the biggest crisis of their twenty-five-year marriage when he admits s...

Claire Meadows is ninety-two, a retired piano teacher. She's baked a pistachio cake, as she has for seventy years, and is waiting to be collected for the 102nd birthday party of her old friend Martin, a detective novelist. As she waits, her thoughts meander through a lifetime of memories – marriage, widowhood, friendship, longing, and a sexual awakening that came shockingly late.With humour, ambiguity, and sharp insight, Claire reconsiders the man she married, the life she lived, a...

Lush Library Recommends: Anna James' Books for 2018Variations and fugue on the theme of obsessionVesna Main disturbs our self-image as educated, reasonable and ironic people who read modernist fiction. She disturbs us because we recognise ourselves in her obsessive and bloody-minded characters as they are pushed to the extreme. But they are only too human and seek love, just like us.This is a collection of twenty short stories of di...

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its ninth year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the b...

The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its seventh year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This critically acclaimed series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking...